Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Clueless Rich Guy's "Kristallnact" Comparison Makes Him Famous For Being Dumb

I'd never heard of Thomas Perkins until Saturday.

Thomas Perkins, a billionaire is
distraught that anyone would dare
criticize anyone who is super rich.

Supposedly his some rich fat cat that was once married to romance novelist Danielle Steel. He thinks he's important, anyway.

Now, lots of people are hearing about him. That's because of his classic letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal that popped up in the past couple of days.

That's right, he compared the criticism of the rich to Kristallnacht, that night in the 1930s when Nazis smashed out the shop windows and attacked Jews, which was the start of the process that led to the Holocaust.

Kristallnacht was pretty extreme. More than 30,000 Jews were arrested and imprisoned that night. About 1,000 synagogues were burned. Many thousands of Jewish owned businesses were ransacked and destroyed.

In Perkin's mind, raising the taxes a bit on the rich, along with some moron who damaged a bus transporting Google workers to their job, is just as bad as the kristallnacht nightmare.

Here's what our buddy Perkins writes:

"From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every wordd of our local newspaper the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent."

He goes on to complain about public protests of the buses Google uses to take technology workers from their (expensive) San Francisco homes to their jobs in Silicon Valley. He complains about people calling his ex, Danielle, a snob. He complains about complaints that the very rich are helping create rising real estate prices that are making San Francisco unaffordable for everyone except the very rich.

Perkins concludes: "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descedent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?"

Poor widdle Perkins got his feelings hurt. Awww...

Everybody is supposed to worship the richest 1 percent and if any particular person doesn't hold the rich in the highest esteem, then that person is apparently just as bad as a Nazi.

Uh, Perkins? Just because we don't like you doesn't mean we're going to burn down your house and throw you in a concentration camp. Take a chill pill, will ya?

So, what are you going to do to me, Perkins, for not worshipping you and your money? Maybe you should just take a voyage on your super yacht to get over your bruised ego.

Needless to say, the rest of us, you know, the people who don't have zillions of dollars, are pretty amazed at how wrong, clueless, tone deaf and audaciously insulting Perkins is, but what do we know? We're not wading through billions of dollars in our mansions every day.

The fumes from all that money probably really goes to your head.

Perkins is part of a continuing parade of apparently very clueless rich people who, in their zillion dollar mansions, have gotten a super inflated sense of their importance, who think because they've acquired money they need to be worshipped and the only thing we peons should do is give them more money.

I know most rich people aren't like these buffoons. A lot of them got rich through hard work and talent. But some of the most priviledged and arrogant among them can't take even the mildest critcism or pay even the slightest consequences for their actions without going off the deep end.

Which tells me it's worth it to keep poking at rising income inequality, the cheaters who steal millions with the stroke of a pen, who are much worse than a guy with a gun on a street corner, the people who think they are above the law because they can throw around tons of cash.

So, no Perkins, we're not headed toward another Kristalnacht, aimed at the rich. We just want you to shut up. You're not adding any value to anything.

How the hell did you get rich anyway? You obviously didn't do it through intelligence or talent.